Crisis communication: an overview

Situational Crisis Communication Theory is a theory on how managers could and should handle crisis communication. It has been developed by Timothy Coombs and he proposes that organizations should adjust their crisis responses to the crisis clusters in which an organization finds itself. Based on the level of responsibility that can be ascribed to the organization, it can be decided upon from which crisis cluster to operate.

According to Coombs people want to make sense of a crisis by making attributions. When people search for the cause of an event, they will experience either positive or negative emotions. When a company is not responsible for a crisis, this will evoke sympathy, positive emotions. However, when a company is responsible for a crisis, this will evoke negative emotions with the people. The reputation of the organization can be damaged as result of these negative feelings. Stakeholders can decide to end the relationship with the organization, and even create bad word-of-mouth. This is why it is important for an organization to prevent that the public will see them as responsible for the crisis.

The type of reputational threat the company is under is based on the initial crisis responsibility. There are three crisis clusters possible. In the victim cluster the organization is viewed as the victim of the event, and has a very weak attribution of crisis responsibility. Examples are natural disasters, rumours, and terrorism. In the accidental cluster the event is considered unintentional or uncontrollable by the organization, and there is a minimal attribution of crisis responsibility. Examples are challenges from stakeholders or technical errors. In the intentional cluster, the event is considered purposeful, and the attribution for crisis responsibility is very strong. Examples are human errors and misdeeds.

Strategies 

Coombs distinguishes four types of crisis response strategies, three are so-called primary crisis response strategies and one is a secondary crisis response strategy. Deny, diminish and rebuild are the three primary crisis response strategies, these concepts include different separate strategies. The deny strategies are; ‘attack the accuser’, ‘denial’ and ‘scapegoat’. Attacking the accuser means that the organization will seek confront the source of the accusations. Denial means that the organization claims that the organization is not in a crisis at all. The scapegoat strategy involves the organization blaming the crisis something from outside of the organization. The diminish strategies are made up of ‘excuse’ and ‘justification’. When using the excuse strategy, the organization aims to minimize the responsibility for the crisis by denying the intent to do wrong or claiming that it was never able to control the events that lead to the crisis. The justification strategy means that the organization attempts to minimize the perception of damage that the crisis has caused. The strategies belonging to the rebuild strategy are ‘compensation’ and ‘apology’. When using the compensation strategy, the organization offers money or other funds to the victims of the crisis. The apology strategy means that the organization accepts full responsibility for the crisis and asks its stakeholders for forgiveness.

The secondary crisis response strategies are covered by the term bolstering strategies and are the following; ‘reminder’, ‘ingratiation’ and ‘victimage’. In the reminder strategy, the organization reminds the stakeholders of the beneficial work that the organization has done in the past. The ingratiation strategy means that the organization actively praises its stakeholders. In the victimage strategy, the organization reminds its stakeholders of the fact that the organization itself is also a victim of the crisis.

Van der Meer et al. (2014) 

The research question belonging to this study has been formulated as follows: Does the organizational-crisis framing of the domains PR, news media, and the public align over time?
This empirical study focuses on the frame-building process of organizational-crisis situations in the interplay between the domains public relations (PR), news media, and the public. It seemed like the alignment was a temporal necessity forced by external circumstances, namely the emergence of an organizational crisis. With the meaning coherence to the situation and the decrease in crisis emergency,the domains had again space to base their framing on their specific interests and goals. 

A caste study

A failure in the synchronising system for smartphones called Exchange ActiveSync caused a flood of issues. The failure caused these devices to receive an error and continuously try to connect to Microsoft's service. This resulted in a flood of traffic that their services did not handle properly, with the effect that some customers were unable to access their Outlook.com email and were unable to share their SkyDrive files via email. For some this lasted a few hours, but for others it lasted even 3 days.
Type of crisis: preventable Response strategy: rebuild, microsoft has strong attributions of crisis responsibility regardless of their crisis history. They are responsible for the service their customers are using.
They could have prevented the crisis by:

• increasing network bandwidth in the affected part of the system 
• changing the way error handling is done for devices using Exchange ActiveSync 
• monitoring the system on a continuous basis and make additional changes as needed to keep the service healthy 

What they should have done according to Coombs (2007); Compensate or Apologize.

The solution 

The company made a public apology, emailed directly to all of its Outlook customers and published on the corporate website. The statement fully and simply explained the problem. Also Microsoft fully acknowledged to be responsible for the crisis. Moreover the statement included points for improvement.

On the 23rd of July 2013, the airline company Southwest airlines had the nose gear of an airplane collapse at LaGuardia airport. The plane skidded over the tarmac for over 660 meters. Of the 10 passengers that were hurt during the accident, 8 people had to go to the hospital. Barely half an hour later the airline was actively communicating with the public, as figure ? shows. This has lead to positive reactions of the public, as can be seen in figure ?. The airline has responded in a very proactive and informative way, and has been very transparent about the accident. They have also taken their communication immediately online. This shows that the model of Coombs is not necessarily the best response. However, the response of Southwest airlines corresponds with the arguments of Ewald van Rooij about the obsoleteness of the SCCT model.

Reflecting on the guestlecture 

Guest lecturer Ewald van Rooij made some remarks on Coombs’ SCCT. Calling it obsolete. He mentioned: - Crisis communication has changed completely over the last five years by the fact that the audience is always online, and services are tested 24/7. - Companies need to be transparent but not naïve - Crisis communications strategies should ultimately be proactive instead of reactive In our opinion Van Rooij made some good remarks on SCCT. And SCCT by Coombs might need an update but is definitely not obsolete. At least not yet. As the last case, of Southwest has indicated, transparency and Proactiveness have become very important. But in a lot of cases SCCT is still applicable.

By Nine, Margarita, Fernando and Maarten

Everybody in Italy was waiting for Netflix. Except for Sky.

Finally, Netflix arrived in Italy. The online service was made available from midnight of the last Wednesday and offers three price plans,  including the first month for free, for Italian subscribers.

 As most of you already know, Netflix is a service available on several devices, such as computers, tablets, consoles, smartphones or smart televisions, and it is offered at a lower prices than the options provided by traditional TV providers. Moreover, Netflix distributes its products in a different way than traditional TV through the use of the Internet,  and it also provides original contents that are available just on this platform.

Therefore, this service will provide tough competition to well-established and more expensive Italian competitors such as Mediaset and Sky Italia, both of which have recently launched their own on-demand streaming services. In  specific, these on-demand streaming services, which are named respectively Infinity and Sky Online, were created by these companies in order to contrast the arrival of Netflix in Italy. These companies have often affirmed that there is an exaggerated emphasis around Netflix while the latter seems that do not want to enter in conflict with the competitors. These different approaches with the media are shown by the following interviews.  

Different PR approaches.

During the presentation of Netflix to the Italian press, Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of the company, affirmed that: "Our target in Italy is to reach a family out of three. In America, it took us seven years to reach a family out of three, from 2007 to 2014, and we are doing it also in other European countries where we arrived earlier than in Italy.  It 's very easy  to grow during the first year and we are very careful in this time, where we especially focus on subscribers’ happiness which allows for new subscriptions."

From Sky Italy side, in an interview released on Tuesday, October 22, the long-awaited day of the arrival in Italy of Netflix,  Andrea Zappia who is the managing director of Sky Italy, commented the entrance of this new competitor in the Italian market. He said that he absolutely "not worried" and then, referring to news media, he added: "You describe it as the most extraordinary  TV innovation”. Regarding the new competitor, he said: “I have an extraordinary respect for their work. They are not good, very good. However, it is a bit old service in Italy. We now have 2 million 800 thousand households that use the Internet content. The difference with Netflix is that we have much newer and richer content. So, Netflix is welcome. It is present in all countries where Sky compete and they do well, but it certainly is not a revolution, nor worries us."

Reactions on Social Media

On one hand, many people on Facebook and Twitter showed support for Netflix and its project which can be profitable for the Italian entertainment industry. Moreover, they also appreciated that the company really focuses on customers’ happiness.

On the other hand, many users of social media saw Zappia’s statements about the fake innovation represented by Netflix as a sign of greediness and fear. In specific, they pointed out the fact that Sky and Mediaset are using any strategy to undermine Netflix success in Italy (i.e. statements against Netflix; the creation of streaming services similar to Netflix).

Since social media do not represent the whole picture, how do you think Sky customers interpret the statements of the managing director of the company? And do you think that Netflix should enter in this PR conflict with its competitors?

Alessio Maggiore

‘Refugees take charge of Danish newspaper for a day’

That’s the actual name of the article that appeared on guardian recently. Denmark is one of the ‘popular locations’ for refugees these days. They have welcomed loads of them and the issue has been on the government agenda for quite a while. However, as the article outlines, ‘voices of refugees have been largely absent from the mainstream media’. That is somewhat representative of what is happening in Europe.

The newspaper gave refugees, that are trained journalists/editors/etc. a chance to express their voice without being quoted or put into contexts created by other journalists. They were given full rights to send a message of how they actually feel and what’s happening with their lives. I listen to BBC world news podcast every morning and the message that I had from BBC was crying women and freezing babies VS. Hungary is a bad country, but Austria has every right to act however it feels right. Nothing really consistent. Therefore, at least for me, this takeover of the newspaper for a day seems a very good initiative to close the gap between reality and public opinion.

What do you think about this? It would be interesting if there’s any other examples of similar initiatives.

Karolis Damanskas

Civic professionalism in the world of PR: (Are we) creating common good (?)

Today we all suffer from increased flow of information that clogs up our brains. Not to mention cheap media, PR practitioners are responsible for a big part of what gets to our mental pipeline and gets stuck there. There are some serious calls from scholars addressing the gap between society and PR (which are often overshadowed by business practices, because who cares about those geeks in the labs, right?). Academia calls PR practitioners to be fair, responsible, and reflective, match organizational goal with needs of society and therefore serve it better (Porter, 2009). OK, but what does it really mean?

Brigitta Brunner has addressed the issue, which is summarized as a need for civic professionalism from the PR practitioners (Brunner, 2015). What makes the paper even more interesting is the methodology used. The author interviewed PR practitioners with extensive experience in the field. In other words, the author assessed current status of the field in terms of civic professionalism.

This short article says more than enough about faults of PR profession. It’s what we all already know: information is usually being provided for the good of the organization rather than public (not to mention common goal). Sure, PR specialists use a very attractive surface logic of ‘we do care’, but seriously? It is quite obvious what makes scholars concerned. While ethics of PR are something that’s usually defined, civic professionalism is yet to be discovered.

And that’s proved by the author. Many of interviewees thought that the concept of civic PR profession is something that they would need to explain to their colleagues, because it’s not very common to understand it. Moreover, they thought that many colleagues would see this as ‘not a part of their job’. Scary, right? Although some said that if it was linked to their organizational goals that might increase their interest. Which again leads us to the beginning – organizational goals VS society.

But what benefits can civic professionalism in PR bring to organizations? The author names a few: it helps to build reputation, it helps to maintain credibility, and it’s a chance to show that organization cares (which brings us to two previous points). Organizations have capacity which is necessary to voice problems and particular events in society that receive too little attention. This does also foster a relationship between organization and society.

I strongly suggest that you look into this more. Even though I’m sure there are very little real civic PR examples (although there are). I therefore conclude that PR should pay attention to their publics not only as a source, target, enemy, or a friend, but as a counterpart in the same quest for truthful, credible and civic PR. PR should not mislead and use, but cooperate and produce the efficiently working society.

Karolis Damanskas

Journalistic sources and their credibility

Press releases, interviews, whistle blowers, news papers, blogposts, social media... you name it. Journalists use multiple sources to find, supplement or research for their articles. But when do we judge sources as being actually credible? And what kind of sources can be distinguished? For this blog post we will mainly focus on these question as the literature has been discussed in class and can be reviewed via the presentation viewer embedded below.

Journalistic Sources
Journalists make use of different kinds of sources in different kinds of ways. When looking at the plethora of sources that are used by journalists to make their own news item, we distinguished three categories that we think cover most of the sources used by journalists.

First we distinguish the original sources, these sources are as the name implies: sources that originate from the original source. Or otherwise said it is about the information that journalists obtain directly from organisations and other actors themselves without any intervention by another actor. Within this category we find sources such as press releases, interviews, frequently answered questions (faq's) or questions and answers (q&a's), whistle blowers and academic articles.

Then we distinguish second-hand sources, which are those sources which most of the time act as an intermediary in relaying information. These sources are a bit more ambiguous as they can at times also act as original sources but most of the time consist of rewritten information obtained from other sources. In this category we find sources such as newspaper articles, blogposts, television and Wikipedia articles. It can also be argued that academic articles also belong to this category as they are sometimes a presentation of multiple other source. However we have chosen to categorize these under original sources because they oftentimes include new information gathered through questionnaires and experiments that would not have otherwise been come to light if the sources were looked at individually.

Lastly, we distinguished hybrid sources. These sources are also ambiguous but frequently present both new original information as well as a recollection of information distributed by other sources. In this way these sources can be even harder to categorize within the previous two categories, demanding this third category to exist. Within this category we may find sources such as twitter (often used as a way to relay known information, but even as often used as a way to write news articles about) and platforms such as Reddit (where other sources are frequently gathered, but new information is also presented through the use of Reddit's Ask me Anything).

Judging credibility
During our presentation we also briefly discussed how we (and journalists) judge our sources on their credibility. Hilligoss & Rieh distinguish three distinct levels of credibility judgement within their unified framework of credibility: the construct level, the heuristic level and the interaction level. At the construct level, we judge credibility by defining its meaning: is something credible when it is truthful, believable, trustworthy, objective, or reliable? Then we define credibility based on the heuristics we have learned throughout our lives: rules of the thumb regarding ideas about the media presenting the information, who endorsed the information and how the information is presented. Lastly, we base our judgements of credibility on the interaction level: judgements based on the content and how the source conveys the actual information within the text or message.

All of these levels are however also influenced by the context and frames in which they are presented. Here we distinguished between our social, relational and dynamic frames surrounding the information seeker that influence and dictate the boundaries of credibility judgements.

Case Studies
Fox News 'No-go Zones'
Have you heard of the areas in the UK and France that are run by jihadists and which non-Muslims cannot enter? No? Well, they don't exist. But that didn't stop Fox News from reporting about them for a week after a self-proclaimed expert on terror had told about areas in Paris and Birmingham that are ruled by muslim religious war.
Watch the video here:

Fox News later apologized later saying:  "To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion."

A French TV show picked up on the issue and went out to investigated these no-go zones
Watch the video here:

Google Autocompleter
Google uploaded this video as a job post, including the tempting description: "'We're hiring autocompleters for Google Search! Are you passionate about helping people? Are you intuitive? Do you often feel like you know what your friends and family are thinking and can you finish their thoughts before they can? Are you an incredibly fast Google searcher? Like, so fast that you can do 20 searches before your mom does 1?". This might seem like a dream job, but obviously it is not true. Google uploaded the video in March, acting as an April' fools marketing strategy. By showing the video, we wanted to show that the source is not the only thing that counts as a 'credibility-predictor'. As Google is regarded as a credible source, people might have the tendency to immediately agree upon all of their releases. However, people must remain critical of messages from any source.

Turtle swim-suits
In addition to the Google video, a story can be very incredible. We stumbled upon a story on turtles that were put on mini swim-suits. Although this might seem highly incredible, the story is actually true. Obviously, if you read the complete story, you might believe the piece, as it comes with a source (the University of Queensland, Australia; where the actual study was conducted). Therefore, to support the statement above, remain critical to any item you read or hear. The source might be credible, the story might be incredible, but you are always left to judge whether you think the story is true or false.

- André, Andrei, Luisa, and Marc

Warehouse De Bijenkorf stops with ‘Drie Dolle Dwaze Dagen’

The well known Dutch warehouse De Bijenkorf stops with their sale days ‘Drie Dolle Dwaze Dagen’. Those sale days are a well known reoccuring phenomenom in the Netherlands since 1984. Those days guaranteed a madhouse at the warehouse. People are standing in front of the doors early in the morning te be sure they will get their stuff. Every year, the Drie Dolle Dwaze Dagen attracks more than 2 million people to their stores and their website. But this year, the sale days are held for the last time.

According to a spokeswoman of de Bijenkorf, the Drie Dolle Dwaze Dagen don’t fit in their concept anymore. De Bijenkorf wants a ‘Premium Experience Strategy’, which means top brands, top shopping experience and topservice. Because of that strategy, they want to reduce their price promotions. That is why de Bijenkorf recently also stopped ‘de Maffe Marathon’, an other well known sale event. The spokeswoman of de Bijenkorf explains: “We are very succesfull. Our conversion increased with ten percent within the first six months of this year. People don’t come over to de Bijenkorf for the reduction, they come to us for the experience.”

De Bijenkorf thinks without the sale days, they will bind their customers. In the long run, you earn less from customers who pop in once a year to score bargains.

What do you think? Is it a smart idea of de Bijenkorf to stop those sale days? Or will they lose a lot of customers by stopping those days?

- Margo van Gils

The Air France Saga Continues..

Less than two hours ago news organization NRC released an article about the restructuring plan of Air France in 2016. Alexandre de Juniac, CEO of Air France/KLM, stated in an interview earlier today that there will be less than 1.000 cuts. These will be made through voluntary redundancies. This is one-third of the 2.900 that was announced about two weeks ago. 

                   A sign of protest:'keep our flights, fire our bosses'. Source: NRC.

Alexandre de Juniac says that redundancies in 2017 can be prevented if Air France and the labor unions will come to an agreement about alternative savings. However, in 2016 hundreds of employees will lose their jobs. Did Air France diminish the impact of the crisis sufficient enough? Or will this news also cause commotion (like two weeks ago)?

 

Source: Twitter. 

At least Alexandre de Juniac managed to keep his shirt on.. 

-Margarita Jansen